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Daily Mail Addressing

Addressing Your Mail: To take advantage of postage discounts, mail must be addressed properly. Following are instructions for best readability.

Addresses Should Be:

• Left Aligned
• No punctuation (except hyphen in zip code)
• Sans Serif Font (such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Helvetica)
• 10-12 point font size
• ALL CAPS

Common Addressing Problems:

• Letters touching (top to bottom; side to side)
• Logo or extraneous printing below or to the left of delivery address line
• Information below delivery address line
• Address slant more than 5 degrees
• Delivery address not immediately above city, state, zip line
• Address not completely visible through window
• Not enough contrast
• Italic, bold, condensed, artistic, or script-like fonts used

Examples of good addresses:

JIM WILLIAMS
XYZ COMPANY
12345 SW JONES ST
NEW YORK NY 10001-2453

JOHN SMITH
FORESTRY DEPARTMENT
EDUCATION UNIVERSITY
111 WILLIAMS HALL
WASHINGTON DC 20001-111

JOHN SMITH
FORESTRY DEPARTMENT
FOREIGN UNIVERSITY
100 WITHAM HALL
LONDON 1GH423
ENGLAND

Example of Problem Address:

Mr. James Jones (italics; serif font; punctuation)
4417 Brooks St. N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20019-4649
Attn: R. Jones (information below city, state, zip line)

Address Placement:

The entire address should be located within the OCR read area (an area that extends 5/8" to 2-3/4" from the bottom of the mailpiece, with 1/2" margins on each side).

The space below and on either side of the delivery address line should be clear of all extraneous (non-address) printing, such as attention lines, logos, borders, etc. It is important to keep the delivery point barcode clear zone completely clear.

Return Address Placement:

The return address must be on the address side of the mailpiece in order to receive postage discounts. No portion of the return address should appear in the OCR read area.